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by McConnell and Boehner and their Tea Party playmates. I know, we haven't quite yet agreed to "compromise" with the Dittoheads, but the signs are writ large over all the news footage coming out of DC. I assure you I will eat crow any way it's prepared if I am wrong and President Obama holds his ground, but I don't think that's a meal I'll have to eat.
Yes, it would be great if the unemployment benefits were extended, but is there no limit to what we will surrender for that? Who do we think will actually wind up PAYING for the unemployment benefits AND the millionaires' tax cut extension? CLUE: it will NOT be the people getting the unemployment benefits and it won't be the millionaires.
This will not be a "Win-Win" situation, despite how some of the "spinners" are trying to package it. The people getting an average tax break of $100,000 from the extension just don't give a damn whether or not poor unemployed people have a Christmas or a home or food for their kids. It will cost them ZERO dollars either way. They just want their tax break and whatever the Republicans have to do to get it for them, fine. That's why they're paying them.
Over ten years, we will borrow 700 BILLION dollars from China and other "friends" on order to pay for the tax cuts for the top 2% of American taxpayers. EVEN IF every last cost-cutting and revenue-enhancing suggestion of the tarnished "Bipartisan Budget Committee" had been adopted, those sacrifices would have merely paid for this millionaire tax cut---i.e., we'd be no better or worse off, economically, in ten years. What hasn't been computed, because it is as impossible to calculate as it is certain to occur, is how many people will DIE so that this top 2% can add to their investment portfolios.
Let's not emulate FOX and insist that both sides of this dispute have equally valid points. If we can't get off our asses and onto the phones about this issue, we may as well turn off the lights and auction off the equipment.
I say the above as a liberal, as a Democrat and as someone who worked his ass off to elect this president. I would love to feel motivated to work for him again.
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